In the end I would rather put up with a flaming asshole that pulls their weight than a flaming asshole that drags the group down. One you can put on ignore while the other ether forces you to ether leave or kick them then the asshole goes to the forum bitching they got kicked for being shitty looking and crying for attention.

Flaming assholes are never acceptable in random content. They drive players away from the game.

Although there seems to be a class of long-time player who would prefer that the game be filled only with other people who are almost (but not quite) as good as they are, that class of player would be playing a game of 200,000-500,000 subscriptions and 1/10 the new content if that were the case.

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Originally Posted by Miuku

They were slightly challenging for completely random groups (Nazgrim, Shammies, Garrosh). Guess what - they were all nerfed to their current levels because they weren't the loot chests they were supposed to be.

I always like to say I could write an essay about how people nowadays are brought up to believe that there should be no adversities in life at all, especially in games and how that is having a tremendous negative social impact.. but I just don't give two shits about the general populace any more.

What we need.. is a plague, that targets only certain types of people.

There is adversity you can do something about and adversity you can't do anything about.

Going into an encounter in LFR that is overtuned for the average participant is adversity you can't do anything about. That's not adversity you learn from or get better from. It's adversity that is just not fun.

Flaming assholes are never acceptable in random content. They drive players away from the game.

Although there seems to be a class of long-time player who would prefer that the game be filled only with other people who are almost (but not quite) as good as they are, that class of player would be playing a game of 200,000-500,000 subscriptions and 1/10 the new content if that were the case.

So you are out right saying that the majority of players are effectively incompetent? I think the majority are competent players and it is just a minority that brings down the majority. From my days of Classic I have worked with group members as a team and treated players with respect and the benefit of the doubt. If there is going to be a snag in the group it more often than not comes from one player and rarely is it a case of three or four players truly holding the group back. I dont condone the activity of players being assholes, but they will always exist in some form with some being all bark and others actually being disruptive. Players who are all bark have little real in game disruption compared to those who intentionally are disruptive in game. So if I had to choose I would take the lesser of the two evils.

Some people don't see difficulty as a punishment. Mario without pits would not have been nearly as fun.

Yeah but if level one had featured pits, fireballs, bullet bills, and spinning fire blades the game might never have become as popular as it did. You also didn't need nine other people to clear those obstacles with you in order to fight Bowser.

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Originally Posted by nekobaka

I rarely encountered competent players being flaming assholes. More often I encountered shitty players acting like assholes. The kinds of players who caused issues in groups for me was those who would refuse to CC, purposefully break CC, pull without the tank, stand in shit and blame the healer when they die, and just overall be a self absorbed dbag thinking they shouldnt have to be a team player.

The most miserable experience I had in Cataclysm was when I happened to find myself healing for a group of raid-geared people from the same guild. They would not stop between pulls even though I was half mana the entire time, pulled as much as they could, and pretty much ignored all mechanics. Then they raged at me for not keeping up with heals, called me a bad healer, and said that they were just waiting for their kick timers to expire so they could kick me. I saved them the trouble and dropped group.

Originally Posted by CandyCotton Marshmallows

People need to get over the gear color (and themselves). It doesn't matter, and it shouldn't matter what other players have either. Worry about your damn self. Live your life by that. If you want to concern yourself with someone else, then worry about HELPING them, not putting them down or making sure you stand out as better than them.

Maybe the game would be better with more low DPS nice guys and fewer high DPS jerks? -- Ghostcrawler, Twitter, 6/29/13

Yeah but if level one had featured pits, fireballs, bullet bills, and spinning fire blades the game might never have become as popular as it did.

WoW became popular despite the fact that it had literal stonewall to raid content for vast majority of the player base. It remained popular and even gained new players, even when it had a stonewall to most of the content (back in TBC) and had considerably more difficult "mainstream" content (Heroic dungeons and Karazhan at start).

And then the complainers won and we've ended up here, literally wandering around in the piss stained swamplands of people who expect all yet suffer no adversities.

I still suggest they add a lever to Orgrimmar and Stormwind that you can use once per day and it'll drop an epic item suitable for your class.

Flaming assholes are never acceptable in random content. They drive players away from the game.

Although there seems to be a class of long-time player who would prefer that the game be filled only with other people who are almost (but not quite) as good as they are, that class of player would be playing a game of 200,000-500,000 subscriptions and 1/10 the new content if that were the case.

I've never heard about good players complaining about getting grouped with even better players, so that argument hardly holds water.
I don't like rude players in my groups, but its primarily a result of random matchmaking. No one would willingly invite many of the rudest players who can sneak in via matchmaking and fairly strict votekicking rules. Making the content so easy that no one ever has cause to complain is a poor solution imo.

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Originally Posted by Ronduwil

Yeah but if level one had featured pits, fireballs, bullet bills, and spinning fire blades the game might never have become as popular as it did. You also didn't need nine other people to clear those obstacles with you in order to fight Bowser.

Actually you got all of those things in the first World, though not always at the same time. Mario was quite the difficult game in its day. Part of the series that coined the term Nintendo Hard. So clearly challenging content in video games doesn't deter success.

The most miserable experience I had in Cataclysm was when I happened to find myself healing for a group of raid-geared people from the same guild. They would not stop between pulls even though I was half mana the entire time, pulled as much as they could, and pretty much ignored all mechanics. Then they raged at me for not keeping up with heals, called me a bad healer, and said that they were just waiting for their kick timers to expire so they could kick me. I saved them the trouble and dropped group.

I think they'd be well served by making heroic 5 man dungeons that you have to form your own group for, so this kind of thing wouldn't happen.

I've never heard about good players complaining about getting grouped with even better players, so that argument hardly holds water.
I don't like rude players in my groups, but its primarily a result of random matchmaking. No one would willingly invite many of the rudest players who can sneak in via matchmaking and fairly strict votekicking rules. Making the content so easy that no one ever has cause to complain is a poor solution imo.

You're not reading.

I very specifically didn't say "good." I used words like "skilled."

When you group one or two somewhat unskilled players with a group of 3-4 guildies who have been raiding together for a year or five, it usually doesn't go well, especially when it's 3-4 DPS who have queued to get a random tank and/or healer. And then they are going to run some (relatively) challenging content, well, horrifically difficult to the newbie, and boringly same old shit to the knuckle dragging elitist pricks.

Actually you got all of those things in the first World, though not always at the same time. Mario was quite the difficult game in its day. Part of the series that coined the term Nintendo Hard. So clearly challenging content in video games doesn't deter success.

It's better to say that difficulty didn't deter success. But it's not at all clear that such difficulty could again be successful. Modern releases of difficult games tend to be niche products. They have their audience, but it isn't a terribly large one.

"There is a pervasive myth that making content hard will induce players to rise to the occasion. We find the opposite. " -- Ghostcrawler
"Almost every time I have gotten to know a critic personally, they keep up with the criticism but lose the venom." -- Ghostcrawler
"Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome." -- Samuel Johnson

When you group one or two somewhat unskilled players with a group of 3-4 guildies who have been raiding together for a year or five, it usually doesn't go well, especially when it's 3-4 DPS who have queued to get a random tank and/or healer. And then they are going to run some (relatively) challenging content, well, horrifically difficult to the newbie, and boringly same old shit to the knuckle dragging elitist pricks.

Sure, it will be fun.

Good and skilled are synonymous so I don't take your point.
But yes ideally, LFD and LFR shouldn't be pushing good and bad players in together. Or skilled and unskilled, if you prefer.
The guildies are probably giving out about the "random" in guildchat or voicechat, and the poor newbie is wondering why no one is talking to him except in phrases like "...", "wtf noob" and "FFS", perhaps not realising that the newbie isn't part of their hivemind.

WoW became popular despite the fact that it had literal stonewall to raid content for vast majority of the player base.

That's because the game had plenty of things to do other than raiding. Raiders whined that they couldn't replace burn-outs fast enough so Blizzard opted to super-speed everyone's ascent to the end game in order to funnel players into raiding that much faster. There's a reason people burn out on raiding. It's intense for a couple of weeks and then it becomes boring and frustrating. The stonewall to raid content was a plus, in my opinion, but it didn't sit well with raiders. Blizzard took away everything but raiding under the pretext that raiding is the only form of content that retains longevity. Well, of course it is, because that's how Blizzard re-designed their game! On my first character I didn't reach the end game for about six months. Even then I only ever did dailies on my main and levelled my alts until some guildies talked me into running heroics with them. That's when the gearing treadmill kicked into high gear. Since then the end game has consisted entirely of chasing the next gear level in the latest raid tier. To be honest I thought it was more fun to gather all the ST quests and finish them in one epic run and to see the Zelda tribute quest to completion, even though by the time I got its gear rewards I had outleveled them long before. Honestly lots of these problems would fix themselves if they made gear upgrades more gradual. Do we really need a 30+ ilevel difference between tiers? I'm gearing my pally right now and I'm still amazed at the difference in DPS every time I upgrade a tier. It's no wonder that actual raiders come under the impression that everyone else is so bad.

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Originally Posted by Tamerlane2

Actually you got all of those things in the first World, though not always at the same time. Mario was quite the difficult game in its day. Part of the series that coined the term Nintendo Hard. So clearly challenging content in video games doesn't deter success.

Except there was that one turtle you could repeatedly jump on to boost the number of your lives to 99. At that point you had plenty of chances to figure out the mechanics. Also the controls were much simpler: up, down, left, right, and jump. You say it was difficult but consider that you have to do all that in WoW plus you have to maintain your rotation and/or keep everyone else alive plus you have to be properly gemmed, enchanted, and geared. Oh and you have to get at least nine other people who are willing and able to do the same. If Mario was difficult what does that make WoW?

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Originally Posted by Tamerlane2

I think they'd be well served by making heroic 5 man dungeons that you have to form your own group for, so this kind of thing wouldn't happen.

Given that my entire guild had quit the game by that time you're right in saying that this kind of thing wouldn't happen. I would simply have unsubscribed because I wouldn't have been able to get a group period.

Originally Posted by CandyCotton Marshmallows

People need to get over the gear color (and themselves). It doesn't matter, and it shouldn't matter what other players have either. Worry about your damn self. Live your life by that. If you want to concern yourself with someone else, then worry about HELPING them, not putting them down or making sure you stand out as better than them.

Maybe the game would be better with more low DPS nice guys and fewer high DPS jerks? -- Ghostcrawler, Twitter, 6/29/13

Given that my entire guild had quit the game by that time you're right in saying that this kind of thing wouldn't happen. I would simply have unsubscribed because I wouldn't have been able to get a group period.

Eh? I'm just talking about making heroic 5 man dungeons like heroic scenarios, rated BGs, arenas and non-LFR raiding.
Normal 5 man dungeons would still be queuable in the same way as random BGs and LFR.

I've cleared all of SoO many times as both dps and healer except Garrosh in LFR. Usually in a reasonable amount of time and maybe a wipe here and there. For some reason no one gets the Garrosh fight and after about 3 wipes I'm done. I'm a former raider but stop playing after my guilds first Cho'gal kill and between then and now with LFR it seems people either don't get it or don't care anymore. I'm still in the same guild as before I quit but can't make their raid times so I'm forced to LFR. Not my ideal game play but hey that's life now. But as OP has stated 13 times is literally unbelievable. LFR is bad but not that bad.